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C-GEM brings polymer science to Bay Area elementary schoolers

A woman and an elementary schooler are leaning over a classroom desk, holding dry pasta and pipe cleaners.
Izzi Piper (graduate student, UC Berkeley) guides a Franklin Elementary fifth grader through building their own pasta polymer.

On Tuesday, C-GEM researchers—Vincent Chim (graduate student, UC Berkeley), Helena Roberts-Mataric (graduate student, UC Berkeley), Izzi Piper (graduate student, UC Berkeley), and Qi Xie (postdoc, UC Berkeley)—participated in Community Resources for Science’s (CRS) Bay Area Scientists Inspiring Students (BASIS) program. C-GEM partnered with CRS to adapt “Pasta-mers” into an hour-long lesson for K-5 classrooms, guiding students through the process of engineering a polymer for different functions.

Try “Pasta-mers” at home by clicking the button below!

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